fragments in order, M. de Longperier was enabled to decipher the
names of two of the Gaulish emperors who lived in the second half of the
third century of our era, from which he concluded that it was a portion
of the imperial inscription, and that the construction of the
amphitheatre accordingly dated from this period. The pride of the
Parisians, however, took offence at this interpretation, and it was
considered as highly improbable that the Romans "should have delayed for
more than two centuries and a half to construct, for the use of the
population of a city as important as Lutece had become, a monument
similar to those the ruins of which have been enumerated in more than
fifty Gallo-Roman cities,--a figure which shows how much the diversions
of the amphitheatre and the theatre were relished by the Gauls." M.
Gourdon de Genouillac, in his history of Paris, decides that the
structure dates from the second century.

[Illustration: REMAINS OF ROMAN AMPHITHEATRE, RUE MONGE, DISCOVERED IN
1869.]

It may be observed that, in the third century, Roman Gaul became a
practically independent State,--from A.D. 258 to 273, from Posthumus to
Tetricus, its connections with Italy ceased, and it maintained its own
emperors and its own legions. This was in sympathy with the rising
spirit of nationalities, awakened throughout the empire by Septimus
Severus, but in this ephemeral empire of the Gauls the old Celtic
influence had but little part. "If there took place," said M. Camille
Jullian before the _Academie des Inscriptions_ in 1896, "as we would
willingly believe, a Celtic renaissance at the opening of the third
century, it was entirely superficial, and doubtless slightly factitious;
it resembled that reaction in the life, the language, the traditions of
the provinces which the French Romanticism brought about in 1815. Like
that, it in no way changed the ideas of the nation, it had no influence
upon the political and social destinies of Gaul." With regard to the
fondness of the ancient Gauls for histrionic and spectacular
performances, we may quote M. Reinach again: "The qualities and the
defects of the present inhabitants of France may all be found again
among the Gaulish contemporaries of Cato and Caesar. The warlike humor,
the facility of elocution, the curiosity--often turbulent, have
remained, throughout the centuries, the portion, more or less enviable,
of the inhabitants of Gaul."

An important publication in folio by Fi